


two souls with everything yet to be said

by Mia_Zeklos



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Banned Together Bingo, Depression, Drug Use, F/M, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Physical Care as a Love Language, Self-Hatred, mild but it's there and a semi major plot point, self-loathing isn't a tag sadly but that's mainly what I meant, tldr Ben is having a Bad Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28580568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mia_Zeklos/pseuds/Mia_Zeklos
Summary: “Oh, Ben.”It’s all she says. There’s no judgement in it, no vitriol, not even an ounce of gloating; just exhaustion, clear as day and finally unleashed after nearly a year apart.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020





	two souls with everything yet to be said

**Author's Note:**

> Started writing this so many months ago I genuinely don't even remember what inspired it to begin with. Title from [here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwRzDnQkf-o) Part of my Banned Together Bingo card, for _Psychedelics_. Feedback is, as always, most welcome!

The mornings are the worst part.

He does his very best not to let it show, but with every passing day, it’s more and more difficult. His entire body aches in an entirely different way from what he’s used to after battle or a particularly rough round of training – it feels like exhaustion and little else, weighing him down like he couldn’t ever move again if he tried.

It had been understandable at first – the gap that Snoke’s lack of presence had left in his mind is considerable and more painful than he had ever imagined, not because he misses him but because the aimlessness is almost worse than the endless mistreatment. But later, as he struggles to crawl out of his bed every day in order to tend to his growing empire, he has to admit that there’s something else at play too.

Supreme Leader Kylo Ren is, in at least one way, not much different from Ben Solo – the Galaxy’s weight is still on his shoulders, everyone’s demands and pleading and expectations needling at his mind at all times no matter how hard the people in his surroundings try to keep their thoughts safe from his presence. It had been draining before and it’s even more draining now that he doesn’t have a Master to answer to and no hand to guide him, but he manages somehow; goes through the motions and does what he does best – burn and rage and destroy everything he can find into submission. It had been enough for Snoke; the growing power at his fingertips and the promise for more, should he decide to reach for it. It should be enough for him.

It’s not.

Everything feels like a chore. That’s not much of a change either, but he has a lot more responsibilities to think of now and far more people to respond to, the majority of whom either detest him or distrust him. The sickly undertone of expectation in the air around him, suffocating and heavy, only serves to spike the anxiety inside him ever further.

At first, he has his routine to rely on to keep him on track. It’s easy enough, after so many years – training, meditation, shower, fulfilment of whatever duties he has towards the First Order (and the Jedi Temple before that) for the day, training, meditation, shower, sleep. His days get longer and his nights – shorter by the week, but it’s fine. It’s what he’s used to and it means he stays in line. The food he usually grabs somewhere between two tasks becomes a rarer and more erratic event than it had already been, but that’s fine, too, as long as he can keep himself together.

He relies on it so much, in the end, that it’s no surprise that when he stumbles, he falls and crashes, _hard_.

Donning the helmet again shaves a few hours off of his routine every day and it leaves him with more time for training. Meditation is pointless at this point, as it brings him no serenity; if anything, it swirls him even deeper into the growing pit of his despair. His mind is a muddled mess of bitter disappointment and rage and love and sorrow with all the same faces swirling up to the surface whenever he tries to instil some order in his thoughts. He turns his attention towards conquest instead, opting to gather as much support as he possibly can for his budding empire, but even battles don’t really help at this point – each war he wages, each planet added to his growing realm, is nothing but another source of exhaustion; a weight attached to his back, pulling him down into the depths of something he’s desperately trying to outrun.

For a while, stimulants feel like another good idea. Opiates of any kind had been strictly forbidden by both his uncle and Snoke, for similar reasons – relying on his mind is what the Force is all about and he can’t control any of it quite as well as he should when he’s out of it – so he’s not surprised to realise that there’s a dull rebellious streak buried somewhere deep inside him that still enjoys breaking their rules for the thrill of it, even now that they’re both gone.

It’s during one such session – he calls it _medication_ in front of the people who order it for him and a _stimulant_ in his mind, but he knows the proper words for it from his father’s stories when he’d been just a child – that he realises how much of what he does is based in guidelines and orders left by dead men.

At first, hallucinations had been part of the point – he had seen things that the Force and the Maker and any other faceless entity that he doubts is listening hadn’t been able to offer him after he’d meditated for hours on end and they’re far better than everything that frequents his nightmares. In the visions he gets, the past and the future and his endless list of mistakes and regrets don’t exist, and it all boils down to _him_ – his wants, his needs, the things he has to say but had never had the chance to voice even in his mind. It had been helpful, in a way, but as it had started happening more and more often, that particular side effect – as well as many of the others – had slowly lost its touch until he had given up on the emerging habit completely. He had been losing track of time because of it, recently, and it had taken toll on nearly everything in his life.

Looking in the mirror, he’s once again grateful for the mask he had ordered to be put back together again, wary of the scrutiny among his fellow officers given that they now all answer to him. He’s always been aware of the fact that he makes for an intimidating figure; it’s much better if they don’t see the circles under his eyes or how matted his hair has got now that he has little interest in taking care for any part of his appearance or, really, for any part of _himself_. It feels pointless, at the end of the day – there’s no one he matters to who would care for any change they could see, as no one had seen his face in weeks. The blood sticking to his cape and crossguard and skin, dried somewhere between his battles and the inevitable return to his new flagship, mounts over him until it’s nearly suffocating, but it’s all right. This is all he is; all he’s ever been. The devastating clarity that the lack of increasingly questionable substances had brought had reminded him of that much, at least – he’s a means to an end in an unresponsive universe. All he can do is struggle along towards some impossible new point of view that would give him a purpose of any kind, though it feels more like wishful thinking than anything else at this point.

All that time, the bond that the Force had cracked open between him and Rey had stayed closed. So, when he wakes up in the middle of his largely insufficient sleep cycle one night, disoriented and disbelieving to see her sitting at the corner of his bed, looking about as on edge as he feels, for a moment he’s sure that the visions had come back to haunt him in some residual effect that he hadn’t predicted before.

Any such illusion shatters when she speaks, eyes disarmingly kind in a way he had believed he had imagined the last time he had seen it. His memory had been playing so many tricks on him over the years – had been questioned by his mentors so often – that it’s easy to pretend that he had never seen the terrible mixture of pity and horror and betrayal and a hint of care that she had looked at him with when he had put the Galaxy at her feet.

She doesn’t look betrayed or horrified now, but the pity is still there, intolerably, as well as the love, in a paradox he had never seen coming. His confusion must be obvious even under the muted starlight coming in through his quarter’s visors – he hadn’t had to control his expressions in front of anyone in quite a while now, and when Rey speaks, it’s with an exasperated sort of affection that he can’t even begin to decipher.

“Oh, Ben.”

It’s all she says. There’s no judgement in it, no vitriol, not even an ounce of gloating; just exhaustion, clear as day and finally unleashed after nearly a year apart.

“Why are you here?”

He can’t manage anything else just now, even for her sake, and Rey scoffs. Her eyes are suspiciously red and a bit puffy and she rubs at them furiously, her next words leaving her on a hiccup that sounds too much like she’s on the verge of tears for it to be anything else.

“Why do you think? It isn’t up to me.”

“But you were finding ways to block it, before.” He had done the same, unwilling to face yet another part of his past, recent as it is, that is better left forgotten, but it’s far easier to focus his frustration on her. “Why not now?”

“Because I didn’t _want_ to. I couldn’t bring myself to try. Is it that hard to believe?”

In all honesty, it is. There’s nothing that he can offer her in exchange for whatever salvation she thinks she should inflict upon him now and it’s a difficult thing to admit – that she’d been wrong about him and right to leave, and that he’d disappointed her as thoroughly as possible in the matter of minutes. It should have definitely been enough for her to never try again. No one before her ever had; not with him. He’d ran out of second chances the moment he’d been born, it had always seemed.

“You’re in pain,” she says next, as if it’s an enormous revelation. He would have laughed if he’d had the energy for it, but as it is, he manages a half-hearted shrug, which only seems to make her angrier. What riles her up quite so much, he can’t figure out – hadn’t she seen this coming? And even if she hadn’t, why would she _care_? It’s the one question that pops up again and again, no matter how many times he tries to remind himself that it’s not as far-fetched a concept as he had always been made to believe. He still remembers his father’s face, lit up with worry and a hint of hope before he’d drawn his last breath, and sees an echo of that same emotion painted all over Rey’s features now, and it’s surreal; trying to connect the two. The day his father had died, she had been furious and had never really let go of the betrayal she’d apparently felt, despite the fact that they’d been enemies from the start; the fact that the same sentiment is now directed at him – felt on his behalf – is more than he can torment his tired mind with.

“I usually am.”

It’s not pity he’s looking for and, thankfully, it’s not what he gets – if anything, Rey just looks angrier. It’s the truth and there’s no point in holding back on it – pain has been his constant companion for years on end, only fuelled further by everything Snoke had deemed in their collective best interest. Over time, it had started existing in the background of his life, like a constant, relentless buzzing of a fly he can never swat away, but the way it had flared up after his father’s death had left behind a devastation like no other. Ever since, he’d been looking for a way out, no matter what it happens to be, but it always feels just out of reach; always one wrong step away from what he truly needs.

“You don’t have to be.” He looks at her, both disbelieving and begging her to put an end to whatever this is before it turns into yet another explosive – in the most literal sense, as per usual for them – fight, but Rey insists. The same way she’d blindly led herself into his bathroom, she gestures to the edge of it and he wonders, fleetingly, if she’s being allowed the smallest of glimpses of his surroundings through the Force. It’s another thing he can’t bring himself to contemplate – why the Force would want to help him out – and instead, he sends Rey another inquisitive glance. “Sit down.”

“There’s nothing you can do for me. I thought we agreed on that.” Still, he follows orders; sits down on the edge of the bath, back turned to her due to the lack of space she’d left him – which, he now realises, might just be on purpose – and closes his eyes when he hears the sonic shower turns itself on, thrumming over his hair and face and washing away the filth of suffering past. “I’m beyond salvation, remember?”

“You don’t get to decide that.” She’s methodically unbuttoning the back of his tunic, having already pushed the cape aside, and he’s distantly astonished to realise that he doesn’t want to stop her.

Arguing for the sake of it hadn’t lost its edge, however. “But you do?”

“For now, yes.” She says it with such unshakeable confidence that he doesn’t try to protest, but she must be able to sense the budding question and Ben can hear the smile in her voice when she speaks again, her fingers sinking into his hair as he feels her through the Force, trailing over every stained part of him like no one had ever dared before. “Just until you change your mind.”


End file.
